Release notes

The Widelands Development Team is proud to announce the immediate availability of build 16 of Widelands. Widelands is a free, cross-platform strategy game in which players control the fate of a small tribe that can grow into a big empire, in a style of play that is unique in the open source world. Please visit our homepage http://www.widelands.org/ to learn more.

Some of the highlights of this build are:
* a new scripting Engine that allows for complex scenarios.
* a new watch-me-do tutorial and a new scenario for the Atlanteans
* win conditions for multiplayer games which add variety
* OpenGL renderer
* improvements to the user interface in many places
* more control over which wares are stored in ware houses
* team support in multiplayer
* shared kingdom for multiplayer, more than one player can control the same kingdom
* new maps
* new sounds
* extremely many new graphics and animations: there is no concept graphic in widelands anymore.

As usual, there have been many more improvements to the usability and performance, as well as numerous game-play improvements and bug-fixes.

Widelands is currently translated to 100% into the following languages: German, French and Dutch. It is > 80% translated into the following languages: Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, English (United Kingdom), Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Galicia, Italian, Finnish, Czech. You can help out translating directly in your web browser: http://translations.launchpad.net/widelands .

The new scripting engine makes it impossible to load scenario maps from build 15 or earlier. If you are in the middle of a scenario (like a campaign map), finish it in build 15, then upgrade to build 16 and continue the next map in build 16. Loading of non scenario games from build 15 is supported.

Widelands uses SDL as graphics and input library and is currently available for Windows (32-bit) and Mac OS X (Intel, PPC) and in source code. We no longer ship binary Linux packages because of the poor compatibility between Linux distributions. Instead, we try to make compiling for Linux users as easy as possible (see http://wl.widelands.org/wiki/BuildingWidelands/). Also, most distributions will pick up build 16 into their repositories very quickly. Both binary and source packages are available from http://launchpad.net/widelands/build16/build16

Simply download the binary package for your operating system and run the widelands executable! If your operating system is not supported, download a source package and try to compile it for yourself. See the homepage for the libraries you need to have installed.

If you like what you see, please visit our homepage, http://www.widelands.org/ . You may also want to check the forums and our IRC channel, #widelands on Freenode, to arrange multiplayer games with other players.

We especially welcome every helping hand, even if you just want to contribute by helping us find bugs. Also translators for all languages are always needed. If you want to get even more involved in the further development of Widelands, you can subscribe to widelands-public@lists.sf.net on http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/widelands-public to keep up with development on a daily basis or meet us in the forum.

Changelog

View the full changelog

### Build 16
- Many new graphics, new sounds.
- Added a dedicated server function for terminal use.
- Improved and refactored font handler.
- Removed barbarian Stronghold from list of buildable military sites as
it did not have a real purpose.
- Added a help button + window function (e.g. to explain the multi player
menu).
- Play a fanfare when a military site gets occupied and another fanfare
when the player is under attack
- Reworked the multi player launch game menu - now different clients can
control the same in game player together (share the kingdom) and other
starting positions can be "shared" in as second (third, fourth, ...)
starting position of a player.
- Add a new Atlantean campaign map.
- Add rudimentary support for ships (you can build them, but they are not yet
useful)
- Add support for multiplayer scenarios. No scenario is shipped yet though.
- Added column for the maximal number of players to the map selection menu.
- Reordered wares and workers in logical groups (e.g. food production, ...).
Also fix the Economy Preferences Menu to be similar to the new Warehouse
windows.
- Barbarian lumberjacks now need a felling_axe which is produce in the metal
workshop. The axe is now only produced in the war mill and the axe factory.
This delays barbarian soldier production in the early game, giving the other
tribes more time to equalize their military production. (bug #667286)
- Give Empire +1 basket so that two vineyards can be build right away to fully
saturate the first marble mine.
- Buttons that represent a toggable state are now really toggable buttons in
the user interface.
- Changed the way compressed files are generated (maps, savegames) and read.
Now it is possible to rename maps and savegames but it is not possible
to load maps from version after this change with versions before this change
- Added a dotted frame border to the mini map.
- Work area preview is now on by default.
- New maps: Desert Tournament, Swamp Monks.
- Improved and added many new animations for workers
- Improved and added fighting animations for soldiers
- Implemented teamview for allied players
- Implemented shared kingdom mode, where two or more players control the same
player.
- Added two new maps.
- Added possibility to create and play multiplayer scenarios.
- Do not show building statistic informations of opposing players anymore
- Gave foresters more intelligence - now they do not remove young trees to
replant another anymore and plant the trees that suit the terrain the best.
- Added host commands like /announce, /kick, ... (type /help in chat window
to get a list of available commands).
- Improved defaultAI's behaviour.
- Added "real" work animations for builders and play "idle" animation, if
the builder has nothing to do.
- Made Empire baracks more useful.
- Added player number user interface and automatic start position placement in
random generated maps.
- Improved the heigth generation algorithm of the map autogenerator to produce
more playable maps.
- Added notification messages for players, when military sites are occupied.
- Added teams (alliances can now be defined before start)
- Now the builder does nomore cause the finished building to see its vision
range.
- Many improvements of the graphic rendering engine
- Implemented "stop storing", "out source", "prefare ware" settings for
warehouses.
- Improved military site's and training site's user interface.
- Improved health bar and level icons for soldiers.
- Improved all exisiting campaigns to use lua.
- Added an interactive "start from no knowledge" tutorial.
- Added new music tracks.
- Added winning conditions (endless game, autocrat, collectors, land lord,
wood gnome).
- Added basic opengl rendering support.
- Added many new and improved exisiting translations.
- Removed unused medic code.
- Reduced healing rate of soldiers.
- New keyboard shortcuts for the message window: N, G, Delete.
- New keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation: comma, period, and (Ctrl+)0-9.
- Experience required by workers per level is no longer random.
- Made the empire barracks a little more useful.
- Improved stock menu: Use tabs and add warehouse-only tabs.
- Changed the boss key from F10 to Ctrl+F10.
- Story Message Boxes are nomore closed by right clicking.
- Added command line option to tell Widelands where to search for translations.
- Improved some of the exisiting maps.
- Improved the "user friendly" compile script and moved it to compile.sh
- Fixed the translation system - users should now be able to select any
compiled and installed translation of Widelands.
- Removed scons and replaced it with cmake.
- Fixed two potential security issues (internet gaming)
- Fixed bug #729772: Selection of Widelands.ttf via options menu
- Fixed bug #687342: No longer complain when a master miner is transferred to
a mine to fill a junior position.
- Fixed bug #612348: Soldiers always move out of buildings to battle
- Fixed bug #670980: Cmd_EnemyFlagAction::Write handles disappeared flag
- Fixed bug #697375: Handle state.coords == Null() correctly in soldier attack code
- Fixed bug #691909: Compatibility with old savegames with barbarian battlearena
- Fixed bug #722789: Always flush animations before loading
- Fixed bug #724169: Military site window no longer changes size erratically
- Fixed bug #708328: infinite loop(s) in building_statistics_menu.cc
- Fixed bug #720338: Options show wrong resulution as selected if no
~/.widelands/conf exists
- Fixed bug #536149: miner/master miner mixed up after enhancing to deep mine
- Fixed bug #580073: Objectives menu update
- Fixed bug #695735: Scrollbar damaged in multiline textboxes in (unique)
windows in FS menu
- Fixed bug #659884: Problem with network savegame loading under windows
- Fixed bug #683082: copy constructor should take const argument
- Fixed bug #669085: Wood Lance (Empire ware) is practically invisible
in ware encyclopedia
- Fixed bug #680207: Economy settings missing ores
- Fixed bug #583985 and #573863: Scout did not work as it was supposed to.
- Fixed bug #618449: [fetchfromflag] - building dissappeared.
- Fixed bug #537392: Computerplayer does not adhere to currently allowed
buildings.
- Fixed bug #547090: Make barbarian weaving mill not buildable.
- Fixed bug #577891: Make atlantean small tower less strong.
- Fixed bug #615891: Commandline parameters homedir and datadir parsing.
- Fixed bug #554290: GGZ game hosting on windows was not working before.
- Fixed bug #533245: Buildings statistics were not calculated correctly.
- Fixed some filesystem bugs.
- Fixed desync bug #590458 and allowed syncstream writing without replay writing
- Fixed replay bug when using recursive destroy (pressing Ctrl while destroying)
- Fixed remaining "tabard cycling" problem and cleanup related to recent economy
changes.
- Fixed bug #577247: When constructionsite finishes, set builder's location to
the new building.
- Fixed bug #580377: Member function defined in .cc file should not be declared
inline.
- Fix bug with nosound option.
- Fixed language list, to only show the found languages - that way it should be
clearer to the user, in case when translations were not compiled.
- Fixed directory browsing in Map save dialog of the editor.
- Fixed bug #568371: Stray numbers in player table in GGZ menu.
- Fixed bug #536373: Race between "transfer" and "cancel" signals.
- Fixed bug #569737: Failed assert when trying to overwrite save
- Fixed bug #568373: Removed flag display in the building statistic menu
- Fixed many other bugs.